Get to know NETC Tour Director, Lisa Escolar who leads educational student tours in Europe, specifically Spain, France, UK, Germany, Switzerland and Italy. Lisa is soon to be a guest blogger at "The Educated Traveler", so stay tuned to hear more from her from Spain!
Where are you from originally?
As you may notice from my name, I am half English and half Spanish. I grew up in southeastern England, and I took annual month-long trips to see family in Murcia, a Spanish province. The contrasts between British suburbia and rural Spanish village life made their impression on me from an early age.
Where do you live now?
After graduating from college in England, I moved to Spain in an effort to get to know my Spanish roots.
How long have you been an NETC Tour Director?
I have been a Tour Director at NETC since 1999.
What’s your favorite thing about being a Tour Director?
The opportunity to witness and play a part in broadening horizons for young people is one of the many things I enjoy about being a Tour Director for NETC. I take pleasure in helping teachers and students have a stress-free, pleasurable trip, and I also enjoy using NETC’s LEAP! philosophy to create a passion for knowledge and travel. Cultural exploration and immersion lead us to examine countries through dance, music, food and conversation.
What languages do you speak?
English, Spanish, French and enough Italian to get by.
What’s your favorite place you have ever been and why?
This is an impossible question! I love India for its chaos, its humanity and its beauty in equal measure. The Salar de Uyuni in the Bolivian Andes is possibly the single most beautiful place I've been to. For miles around in 360 degrees, all you can see is nature. Salt flats after the rains are a perfect mirror of the sky and in the dry season form mile after mile of perfectly tessellating hexagonal "tiles."
What do you do for fun when you aren’t leading students around Europe?
Primarily I enjoy leading myself around the world, but I also like spending time doing up my home. After all the traveling for work and pleasure - there's no place like home.
Do you have a favorite travel quote?
Again, a very difficult question to answer. Partly because there are so many great travel quotes:
"The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page." - St. Augustine
"Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things - air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky - all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it." - Cesare Pavese
"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." - Mark Twain
But mainly because I believe that travel is about the opportunity to throw off expectations and stereotypes and instead experience something new and unique to you.
Anything interesting you'd like to share about yourself?
I have been leading tours for over a decade and I still don't know my left and right!
Blog Posts by Lisa: